About

Festival Strings Lucerne

Chamber

The Festival Strings Lucerne are one of the most distinguished chamber orchestras in Europe for nearly 60 years, with important recordings and concert tours all over the world to their credit. The Australian-Swiss violinist Daniel Dodds has been artistic director and leader of the orchestra since 2012. The very busy Lucerne Festival Strings offers a deliberately wide-ranging repertoire in its own concert series at the Lucerne KKL, as guest ensemble at the Lucerne Festival, in the recording studio and on tour. Since its foundation in 1956, it has premiered more than one hundred works, compositions by Jean Françaix, Frank Martin, Bohuslav Martinu, Sándor Veress, Iannis Xenakis, Krzysztof Penderecki, Klaus Huber and Peter Ruzicka.

For more than forty years, from the ensemble's founder Rudolf Baumgartner played a role as a performing artist and in due course as conductor and artistic director of the ensemble. He had a fundamental influence on the ensemble’s artistic direction however the golden and sparkling sound of the orchestra derives from fellow-founder, the legendary Viennese violinist Wolfgang Schneiderhan.

The Lucerne Festival Strings have been established in 1956 by Wolfgang Schneiderhan and Rudolf Baumgartner. The regular ensemble consists of 17 string players and a harpsichordist but can also be expanded to a larger chamber orchestra according to the specific repertoire.

The Strings owe their special sound both to the masterful instruments used by the players, which were partially made in the legendary workshops of Cremona by Stradivari, Guarneri, and Amati, and to their great performance tradition. Since 2012 the concertmaster Daniel Dodds has served as Artistic Director.

The orchestra regularly tours extensively throughout Europe, appearing at prominent festivals and concert halls. Past overseas tours have taken the Orchestra to South America (2007), USA (2008), Japan (2009) with concerts at Tokyo Suntory Hall and more, South Korea (2010) with concerts at Seoul Arts Center, to China (2010, 2011) with concerts at Beijing’s NCPA,Shanghai Oriental Art Center, Guangzhou Grand Opera and again, most recently to South America (2013) and to China with concerts at the highly prestigious Hong Kong Arts Festival (2014).

The Festival Strings Lucerne is joined on their Asia tour in March 2018 by superstar-soprano Danielle de Niese in a unique musical journey from the music of Mozart through to the songs of New York’s Broadway.

The tour will showcase Danielle's wide ranging repertoire, including works by Mozart, Arditi and the tradition of Broadway musicals, nodding towards the legacy of Leonard Bernstein in the centenary year of the composer's birth in 2018.

Performances

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Past tourHong Kong Arts FestivalAsia, March 2014

Festival Strings Lucerne appear for two concerts at Hong Kong City Hall in programmes featuring music from Bach and Mozart to Schoenberg and Suk.

The orchestra are joined for their second concert by Hong Kong soprano Louise Kwong.

Ahead of the concerts, lead violinist Daniel Dodds provided a Mozart masterclass to string students at Hong Kong University.